SV-POW! … All sauropod vertebrae, except when we're talking about Open Access

Off-topic: Graduation Day!

July 21, 2009

I hesitate to inflict these images on SV-POW! readers, but I have to post them somewhere if only so I can point my family to them; and who knows, maybe some of the rest of you will enjoy the amusing hat.

Last Friday (17th July), I drove down to Portsmouth, with my wife Fiona, to graduate — the consummation of my Ph.D programme. I’d expected to be issued with a sober black robe and one of those hats with a flat square on top, but I was unprepared for just how silly the kit would turn out to be:

Me with Fiona, trying not to laugh at my nice red uniform

In fact, I looked less like a palaeontologist and more like a member of the Spanish Inquisition. Which, I’m sure I need not point out, was the last thing I’d expected.

My supervisor Dave Martill was there for the ceremony, also dressed up as a silly person; and Darren came along in civvies to say hello before the show, and to meet up afterwards at the reception at the Department:

Me, Dave Martill and Darren, sharing a joke about astrapotheres or something.

Also present and graduating was Portsmouth pterosaur maven Mark Witton, but I don’t have a picture of him in regalia, as he turned up too late to have his photo taken — wise man.

As I sat through the very, very long ceremony — if you’ve never listened through a list of 600 names being read out and watched 600 people walk up on stage and shake hands with the pro vice chancellor, you don’t know the meaning of the word “party” — I became bored enough to read the programme cover to cover, and so I discovered that photography during the ceremony is strictly forbidden. Fiona, however, did not realise this, and so I am able to show you this actual photograph of me caught in the act of graduating:

Me at the moment of graduation. Or perhaps Bigfoot.

We doctoral graduands got special treatment: not only did we shake hands with the pro vice chancellor — as though this were not thrill enough — but we also had the titles of our dissertations read out. As mine sounds rather vague (“Aspects of the history, anatomy, taxonomy and palaeobiology of sauropod dinosaurs”) I was left wishing that I’d stuck with my original title.

After the ceremony it was back to the department for nibbles and also to — finally! — pick up the printed-and-bound copies of my dissertation, which until then I’d not seen in the flesh. Apart from the two mandatory copies (for the University and Department libraries), I had four printed — one each for me, Dave, Darren and Matt. Those of you not fortunate enough to have received one of the printed copies can assuage your lust for my dissertation by buying it in mug form:

My dissertation, on a mug, for some reason.

I’m not quite sure what made me think this would be a cool thing to do, but anyway I did it, and this is now my first-choice mug as I make my way through the numerous cups of tea that, as an Englishman, I am obliged to drink each day. (And yes, you really can buy one of your very own.)

Irrelevant addendum

You may wish to know that, at the time of writing, the top five search terms that are bringing people to SV-POW! are: rabbit, flamingo, basement, svpow, and twinkie.

You look as though you might have just come from attending a ren-fro (Renaissance Fair). At the reception, did they hand out meat still on the bone?

I kid, I kid. Congrats, brother, more for sitting through the ceremony than actually graduating. I attended my wife’s Master’s ceremony, and UAA was kind enough to pair undergraduates with graduate students, so we sat through an ungodly amount of name-reading.

I have a funny story to tell. During my own senior year, I wrote a paper about dromaeosaurs for the Student Showcase (basically the university journal). I now look back on that paper with shame and regret, but at the time I was elated to make it in. Anyway, at THAT reception, when the names of the accepted papers were being read and hundreds of fingers were being crossed, the emcee looked at me before reading my paper’s title and apologized for, seconds later, butchering the title: “A new phylogeny of the Dromaeosauridae.” Despite that, I was thrilled to make it in. They even gave me more pages than anyone else for my illustrations.

That look really suits you (except maybe the tie). Probably you should wear that all the time, at least on campus. Also, you should tell Fiona that she looked great, if you didn’t yet, or frequently enough, or today.

I can tell you’re in England and not here, because there’s no way you could have worn all that in the 45°C (113°F) we had here that day.

So, congratulations; you Exist now.

See, the title really should have been “Long Necks, Short”… something. I dare you to use one on your next paper:

Long Necks, Short Hairs: Evidence for Sauropod Pelvic Integumentary Structures

Long Necks, Short Pants: Growth Rates in Juvenile Sauropods

Long Necks, Short Breath: Tobacco’s Contribution to Sauropod Extinction

Long Necks, Short Memories: A Survey of Sauropod Cranial Capacity

Long Necks, Short Tons: Units Confusion in Published Sauropod Mass Estimates

Long Necks, Short Circuits: Sauropod Weather Exposure Risks

Long Necks, Short Stories: Life among the Sauropods

Long Necks, Short Sleeves: Cumulative Effect of Sauropod Digestion on the Jurassic Climate

Thanks, Nathan, there are some good titles there that I might just use one day. And one (Long Necks, Short Tons: Units Confusion in Published Sauropod Mass Estimates) which is an issue that I touch on in an in-press paper.

There are sauropod mass estimates accurate enough to worry about which kind of ton they’re measured in?

Well, sort of. I may as well give the game away, so here it is. The lowest published estimate for Brachiosaurus brancai is the “14.9t” of Russell et al. (1980). This seems astonishing enough — as Paul (1988:10) picturesquely observed, this estimate “is far too low at 15 tons — so little flesh simply cannot be stretched over the animal’s great frame”. But the truth is worse: Russell et al. also cited “the generally accepted figure of 85 tons” (p. 170), which can only be a reference to Colbert (1962). Colbert stated a mass of 85.63 U.S. tons as well as the metric version, so we must assume that Russell et al. were using U.S. tons throughout. That means that their “14.9t” is a mere 13518 kg, which is more astonishing still: the weight of a pair of large African bush elephants.

Fiona’s photo makes me see how exciting graduation really is! What with the Stargate de-mat rings and the trekkie transporter-effect and all.. And I am glad to see that a representative selection of droids were included in the ceremony.. those are droids, right? Though I can’t quite make out what instruments the orchestra are playing. And upstanding at stage rear, a Knight Who Says “Ni” with accompanying shrubbery..

Awesome!!!

The mug is a great idea. Should be obligatory. Does it come with requisite viewing equipment – bifocal microbinocular spectacles with auto-image-stabilization, or some such? I see you have diagrams in colour.. classy!

Actually there is. Including the couplets already noted elsewhere — “Long Necks, Short Shrift”, “Long necks, Short Rations”, “Long Necks, Short-sightedness”, and “Long Necks, Short Tempers” — all possible funny titles of this form have been identified. I defy anyone to come up with even one more.

Well those cranial crests do appear highly pneumatic, compared to Darren’s dorsal hump in the photo, which looks full of ballast. Agree with chris y, the colors match some birds of paradise for boldness, but the pattern coordination is simply stellar. Congratulations!

It is interesting(more like infuriating)that my search term of “rabbit +phylogeny” brought me to your site. Just one more idiot creating a traffic jam on the information highway. Go rubber-longneck on your own time. At least your not trying to shove a product down someones throat but you really aren’t much better…. on second thought, hijacking a search for no good reason might even be worse….

Jeff, it’s hardly our fault if the Internet loves our rabbit posts and phylogeny posts so much that Google ranks them highly. We could try to write more boring articles, I suppose … or are you suggesting that we should banned from mentioning rabbits? Even when they figure in our published papers?